Cider Country

Picking apples was his vocation
Pressed into cider and sold across the nation
Hundreds of trees, all but one planted before his time
One that’s since grown too tall to climb
A head above the rest, stood the young and mighty tree
Causing strife for the picker and his knobbly knees

The secret of its growth hidden below
Too deep to be picked at by the circling crows
Entangled by the hungry roots, lies the pickers wife
She found apples too bitter, and so he took her life

‘Cider Country’ is a poem about a passionate apple picker whose family have been picking at the orchard for generations, who we find out killed his wife in a rage because she was critical about the bitterness of one of the apples. An attempt at some dark humour in this poem with the absurd motivation and the bluntness with which the murder is revealed.